3D Realms Office History

As you probably know, the offices of 3D Realms these days reside in Aalborg, Denmark. This is a relatively new development, as Interceptor bought the company known for such titles as Duke Nukem, Max Payne, Wolfenstein 3D, and many many others. We've decided to take a look back at the history of the offices that made up 3D Realms. We enlisted long timer Joe Siegler to write about this relatively unknown part of the company. This will be a series of articles (going through till 2015). This first part focuses on the original base of operations, the home of Scott Miller's parents in Garland, TX.

EDuke32 Add-on Compilation

Since mid-2013, I had been working on a pack of Duke3D addons which can be easily run from within the EDuke32 launcher by using the grpinfo feature. The result is a collection of about 60 groupfiles containing about 670 levels, over 1.1 GB of data (uncompressed). It works really easily: It comes as an additional folder ("addons") which contains all the groupfiles, you add -jaddons to your EDuke32 shortcut and see all the groupfiles in the launcher afterwards.

Happy 20th, Rise of the Triad!

I moved from Pennsylvania to Texas in December of 1992. I took a job with 3D Realms (then just called Apogee Software). I left a company of 70,000 to come work for a videogame company in Garland of around 20 or so (most of that was order takers at the time). I stayed there from Dec 1992 to May of 2009 when a bunch of us were notably laid off during the development of Duke Nukem Forever. During all that time I either participated in or was witness to the development of a boatload of games. But in all that time I was a true developer in just one of them. That was Rise of the Triad.

Why're there no Duke Nukem slot machines yet?

It's insane. Everyone knows that Duke Nukem is the epitome of badass, and epic characters get to have their own slot machines now. He is one of the most iconic heroes in the U.S. of all time but apparently, we neither see him in brick-and-mortar casino establishments nor on online gaming sites. Not cool, casino game developers.

Casinos now feature hundreds of slot games based on iconic comic book heroes and the pop culture in order to tap the young adults market. IGT, provider of games for Castle Jackpot Online Slots, is one of the pioneers of this idea, developing slots for the fans of Tomb Raider, The Dark Night, Agent 47 of the Hitman, and many other games. If IGT or any other slot gaming developer out there is looking for a new icon to capitalize on, they shouldn’t look further than the Duke of badassery himself. Here are a few reasons why.

The Duke Nukem franchise is big

Perhaps the most difficult process in the creation of slot machines is choosing a theme for them. A Batman slot, no matter how popular Bruce Wayne’s alter ego is, would be boring if all the slots made after Gotham’s masked detective featured the same game play and idea. Thankfully, Batman has a lot of titles (The Dark Knight, Batman and Robin, Batman Returns, etc.) so game developers won’t have a difficult time thinking about a theme for a new Batman slot. The same thing goes for Duke Nukem. To date, the game has a total of 4 main series, 4 expansion packs, and 13 spin offs including Total Meltdown and Zero Hour. A game developer who’d use The Duke for their slots will have tons of ready-made themes to choose from!

Duke Nukem has a huge fanbase

And a loyal one at that. In fact, perhaps Duke's fans are the most hardcore of them all. Any fan of the Duke knows the fiasco of Duke Nukem Forever. The game took 15 years to develop due to a lot of overhauls both in the game and the studio that develops it. While everyone thought Duke Nukem Forever will forever remain a fantasy, die-hard fans knew the day of its release would eventually come. In 2011, the game got out and the fans rejoiced. No one forgot the Duke even if he went hiatus for more than a decade.

So, is a Duke Nukem slot machine a good idea? Absolutely! Duke Nukem came out during the time when PlayStation 1 catered to millions of teens around the world. Those teens are now adults, making Duke Nukem the perfect game to attract the young adult demographic.